The whole surface area of our elements serves as many hundreds of adjacent resistor wires, each conceptually of 100-250 microns ‘diameter’. This is typically between 3x and 7.5x finer than a conventional resistor wire of 0.75mm diameter, which is (of course) a single wire filament.

Accordingly, even allowing for the extra length that coiling a filament wire imparts, our ‘flat’ elements provide many times the effective surface area than do conventional wire elements.

This has relevance not only for the heat transfer efficiency of our elements but also for their safety in use. The current density carried by our large surface area elements is factors fold lower than for a single strand wire. Accidental contact with a live element running at 230/240v is therefore unlikely to prove fatal, which is unlikely to be the case for a single strand wire carrying the same overall current.